Anthony Bourdain has died rather suddenly in France as a suicide. This has come as a complete shock to his fans who adored this popular New York based chef with his adorable elan for food and life. According to a book the New York Times highlights here, it shouldn’t have been.

Read more: C628 Bone in the Throat, Chef Anthony Bourdain

• The Boudain Fact File
  • Anthony Michael Bourdain was born June 25th 1956 in New York City. His father, Pierre Bouirdain, was a classical music executive with Columbia Records and of French descent.
  • His mother, Gladys Sacksman, was a New York Times copy editor and of Jewish descent.
  • He raised as an agnostic.
  • He was very tall — six feet four to be exact.
  • He married his high-school sweetheart, Nancy Putkoski. This marriage lasted from 1985 to 2005.  He said their marriage feel apart when he eclipsed her in the social arena because of his chef fame. Very little is known of her.
  • He was a former heroin junkie.
  • In 2007 he married Italian born Ottavia Busia, a former MMA (mixed martial arts) fighter.  Their daughter, and his only offspring,  Ariane, was born later that year (notice the interception of Sagittarius in the fifth house suggesting a late liaison).
  • While they were still married at the time of his demise, he was dating another Italian, Asia Argento, daughter of Italian film maker Dario Argento and a prominent #metoo advocate.

                                        Cooking the Chart

Bourdain’s popular birth time is 8:35 am but we have slightly rectified it to 8:10 am to work better with his biography.  There is no specific hospital in Manhattan mentioned, so I went with St. Luke’s which is near Midtown. This gives him an Ascendant of 06 Leo 37 showcasing his many talents that propelled him to the top of his profession, and his outspoken views.

He has a water grand trine, from Mars in Pisces in the eighth house to Saturn in the fourth in Scorpio to Leo 01 so this is out of quadrature, but so close to Cancer we are allowing it.  This is a rather unfortunate trine and shows Bourdain’s abrupt tendency to jump from one bad habit to another, historically all three planets are malefics.  He was always influenced by his peers (he got into drugs in the 1980s because everyone around him was doing it, went to cooking school when it was the rage and hung himself when a friend Kate Spade did it).

The Mars in the eighth suggests he would die by violent means.  The Saturn in the fourth highlights the influence of his father and paternal grandparent, who were natives of France:  he specialized in their cuisine and “returned” to his patristic homeland to die.  Uranus in the twelfth highlights his inability to deal with changes in his public life (his company was bankrupt) and personal stress — he was not divorced from his second wife,  and his girlfriend had broken up with him unable to handle his moods.

Bourdain was a smart fellow shown by his Mercury and Sun in different houses and signs, so his ego and logic were not  always in tandem:  but that is not a bad thing, as it makes him independent allowing his logic to lead the way and force him from to break with his too publicity driven ego.

Bourdain died at the five star Michelin rated Le Chambard Hotel in Kaysersberg-Vignoble, France, on June 8th, 2018 while filming another episode of his food-travelogue, Parts Unknown. He was discovered by the director of the series.   The time of death is unknown as he found only after he missed breakfast.  It’s possible it is far earlier than our 5:32 am, so the angles and chart are approximate. 

Notice the radix Saturn is square his transiting Part of Fortune in the first house ( with the symbol the Insignia of an esoteric brotherhood) and Mars (an integrated circuit) on the seventh house cusp.   This latter aspect is thought by French astrologer Choisnard to be important at deaths.

Update: This chart was updated on 5 May 2023.